Monday, 2 May 2016

Azure RemoteApp & App-V: Cloud Service vs Resource Manager

I've been playing around with Azure RemoteApp and App-V in Azure to find a nice little limitation that I think is a huge design consideration. Lately I've been deploying my virtual machines with Azure Resource Manager because it is the future platform and it offers many features not available in the Azure Cloud Services model. The main attraction to me is network security groups where I can essentially configure a network level firewall for different systems in Azure. But more importantly is the Resource Manager Templates, these allow you to build environments in Azure that can be exported to templates so that they can be easily provisioned for development, test and production environments.

The issue I wish to discuss is about a limitation many of you may not be aware of unless you try to deploy RemoteApp and require connectivity to servers in Azure Resource Manager. The first limitation is that the Azure RemoteApp servers must reside on a different virtual network than the servers provisioned using Azure Resource Manager. There can be no sharing of VNet address space between models. The most interesting part is that these virtual networks do not communicate to each other by default which creates the most challenging piece of the problem.

In order to provide connectivity between virtual networks you will need to implement a VPN between virtual networks. This means your bandwidth between networks will be constrained to 100 megabits (basic and standard) to 200 megabits (high speed) depending of the gateway you are using inside of Azure.

If you are deploying App-V Management Servers in Azure and want the best performance I would recommend that you deploy those virtual machines using Cloud Services for the short term. You may also want to keep this in mind with the supporting application infrastructure because the gateway could get congested with that traffic as well.

Here are some links as to help you with configuring the VPN if you need to pursue this architecture.

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About this Blogger

Kevin Kaminski is a seasoned consultant with over 19 years’ experience focusing mainly on Microsoft technologies that range from device management to the data center. Using his experiences from different organizations large and small, he can draw upon practical knowledge that he incorporates into his speaking engagements, training materials, articles and consulting engagements. He currently is a Microsoft MVP for Windows and Devices for IT and has been a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) over the past six years.

Some of Kevin's current consulting engagements include the following roles: Windows 10 consultant with a local property development firm and Configuration Manager consultant with a local consulting company. In addition to his consulting engagements, Kevin spends time blogging and speaking at various technical conferences such as Briforum. Kevin is a past Director of the Calgary IT Pro Community Association and heads up the Calgary Systems Management User Group (a CIC special interest group).